Mike's Fashion Store

We are getting there...though there is still much to do! 

Who knew we had so much stuff? Ok, so I think we all knew. But still come on. After 3 solid days of sorting packing and throwing away. I have enough stuff to sell for at least two cars boots and to open a clothes store. That's not mentioning the furniture village I've started to erect in the garage! 

Another double car boot weekend (fingers crossed for the weather) should help clear a lot of this stuff. That and the bin men on Friday. 

Tom, Millie and Marmalade know something's up. They are spending a suspicious amount of time inside. They will be moving to mummy Sally's house and to their own cabin on Monday. So cat tower will be relocating to cat mansion! 

They are however a good distraction from the friends and family we will be leaving behind. It is indeed going to be hard to leave some amazing people, many we have known for some time. When I think of Darryl coming round to play championship manager in mums kitchen, playing football with Fat Tony and friends (line slightly stolen from wedding speech) at school lunch times, under 15's and 16's hockey with Chris, rotating visits with Matty and Colin, eating cake with infront of Liam and more recently volleyball with Mike and Rob. Not to mention Marco, Marcus and all our footballing chums. Chloe will of course be missing family and friends too. I will avoid the potential blunder of naming names (and inevitably missing some out), by saying she will miss all of you. I'll miss Lesley, Nadine & Gonzi and Becky & Tom most, hehe naughty for picking favourites. Though I'm pretty sure we agreed, thanks to Nadine's dad, Nadine is now my friend and you all know her through me!

Well tomorrow is an exciting day, on my list of jobs is;

Unpack car

Go to the bank

Take bottles to bottle bank 

Shred the pile of old letters and documents

Hoover - everywhere 

Repack car

So something to look forward too!

I've attached some photos to show the 'progress'. As you can see we are begining to prepare for hostel life by sleeping on the floor. 

Car Boots, Tyres and Beef

In my first post I only gave a quick overview of how we got here. I'm going to, in true Star Wars and Lord of The Rings fashion, leave it to someone else to fill in the blanks from the beginning at a later stage. 

 Having returned from another car boot, this time on a Saturday. What do you think I wanted to do? To sit down and have lunch, sit in the garden in the sun, maybe even pack some more boxes. I'm pretty sure it wasn't change a flat tyre! Still it's given me the opportunity to sit down to recover and write this note... 

Yesterday was my last working day in the office, which was strange. It didn't really feel like a last day. Having already said goodbye to Charlie Bear and the Primary Project about 3 weeks ago, along with a large number of the Student Ambassadors I have worked with in the last one to two years. Our final team meeting was on Tuesday, so it has been a gradual wind down. That being said it is still hard to imagine not going into Chichester, not driving past the pig farm, not planning how to provide an aspiration, awareness and attainment activity for 120 students and not seeing the usual faces each day. While I am extremely excited about our adventure, I am sad to leave behind what has been an amazing programme of activities and what was a great team. I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who signed my leaving card and attended my leaving drinks. Chichester has been a huge part not not just my life but Chloe's too. The University of Chichester is where we met and so will always have a place in our hearts. I will, of course, be staying in touch, I have a future alumnus article to be part of! 

 Chloe is finishing work this Wednesday and while she is saying 'yay' now, I know she will deeply miss the people she works with. So Chloe still has the works leaving do to come, with all the ups and downs that comes with. Speaking of leaving seeing you soon dos. We do need to make a slight change to ours. In that our original plan was to have it at home. However we will now lightly be at Chloe's mums, due to our attempt at leaving sooner so the house can be let out. This does mean we need to rethink our venue. *Note to self* 

 We are planning to make real progress with the house now. Hopefully we will be able to move out by next weekend, or early the following week. Which is good because it means will be able to settle the cats at Chloe's mums before we leave. We are going to miss Tom, Millie and Marmalade lots and lots. I'm sure there aren't many cats that catch and play with butterflies, bees, mice and joints of beef! 

Well that's it for now, I'll be back for another update soon (when there's some Internet available).

First post - How we got here

Hello!

This is my first time entering into the world of blogging (the less said about the vlog I started the better!). I'm not sure exactly what I expect to 'achieve', I suppose to be able to keep in touch and update those that care about our travels and adventures.
Having read a few of these over the last 3-6 months, I found some very helpful in terms of information and piece of mind. To hear recommendations and experiences from other people first hand has indeed been useful.

That being said, I'm not sure that it is required, but it makes everything clearer if I say... The thoughts and experiences I write about, are my own views, not that of any employer, or potentially even Chloe.

Hopefully someone reading this finds it useful or informative or something. However the real reason I have decided to start this blog is to update family, friends, former collegues and team mates (and strangers) on our Australian Adventure. It all started....well, I'm not exactly sure when. We have always spoken about travelling and to Australia and New Zealand in particular. Following a visit to the London O2 (to see Westlife, Chloe's choice honest!), we had a discussion about travelling or at least considering looking at opportunities outside of Hampshire, possibly the UK. However it wasn't for a few weeks, possibly months until any action was taken.

Chloe arrived home from another testing time at work to be greeted by me saying 'lets move to Australia!' After initial surprise and slight bewilderment, we discussed the idea.
Having researched online, we felt the next thing to do was to attend a conference / fair on moving aboard and to Australia. This proved informative and was the basis of our first steps to working out what to do visa wise and how to progress. Following a drawn out period we decided that the 4year visa we had initially thought would suit us, was not our best option because it came with a number of restrictions. Having never been to Australia, getting there and being restricted to a state or employer (while this will suit some) was not quite what we wanted. In the end (a number of months later) we made the decision to apply for a working holiday visa. This would give us the opportunity to travel around Australia and really explore the country, while also being able to visit and meet some of the people we have emailed in regards to work opportunities around the country.

That is the start to our adventure, the 'goodbyes' ' see you soons' are happening on a rollling basis now with resignations accepted and house about to be let, we are walking along our 'pathway' to the land down under.